Train smashes into station toilet block

Date: February 1 2013

A PASSENGER train ran off the tracks and smashed into a station toilet block in the Brisbane suburb of Cleveland, leaving passengers with minor injuries and toilet users lucky to escape with their lives.

Thirteen passengers, a driver and a guard were on board when the train's front carriage crashed on to the platform and into the toilets on Thursday.

Live powerlines came down on the middle of the train, but the passengers managed to exit from the rear with only minor injuries.

The men's toilets were all but destroyed.

One woman was trapped inside the women's toilets, which partly imploded from the impact.

Mikayla Gede heard the crash from outside the station and raced inside with her friend Emily Benson. They heard a woman trapped inside the toilets crying for help.

Mikayla, 17, and her friend called the ambulance and pulled at the door to rescue her.

''We wrenched the door open,'' she said.

''The woman got out and said she was OK.

''It was really smashed up in there. The wall had come down in the shape of the front of a train, and it had gone through the male bathroom and into the female.''

Ms Benson said she had been about to catch a train on her way to a TAFE college.

''If I had gone 10 minutes earlier I could have been on the platform and died,'' she said.

The acting station officer at Cleveland Fire Station, Rob Hawxwell, was one of the first at the scene about 9.45am.

''[It has] caused a lot of carnage and damage,'' he said. ''The passengers were very lucky.''

Halfway through the search Mr Hawxwell learned his son had been about to go into the station toilets when the train hit.

''My son heard a loud bang and then got out of the station pretty quickly,'' Mr Hawxwell said.

The passengers were treated at the scene, with 10 taken to hospital before being released.

Mr Hawxwell said Queensland Rail would determine whether an electrical fault led to the crash.

The corrugated iron roof of the station building, which was completed only six months ago, was torn to shreds by the impact.

Superintendent Jim Keogh said the train was approaching the station from the city when it derailed. The police forensic crash unit is investigating.